Chew on this: new research on Qat"The Home Office's drugs and alcohol research unit ...will report in the autumn. If they conclude that qat is dangerous, they may well recommend that it should be classified along with other illegal drugs such as cocaine, cannabis and amphetamines, bringing UK law into line with the majority of western countries."

The balanced view on Moveable Type bloggers"You are all pretentious twats. Every last one of you. You're all latte-sipping, iMac-using, suburban-living tertiary-industry-working WASPs who offer absolutely no new insights on anything whatsoever apart from maybe one specialist field if we're lucky."

Anti-Semitism, real and exaggeratedThe foreign editor of Die Welt syndicated to Ha'aretz. Well worth a read. He concludes: "The European reality [of anti-semitism]... is less threatening than the Israelis believe but more worrisome than the Europeans want to think."

Blumenthal on Dean and Gore"Gore's endorsement of Dean is the most important since grainy film was shown at the 1992 Democratic convention depicting President Kennedy shaking hands with a teenage Bill Clinton."

Julie Burchill: The hate that shames usThe follow up to last week's starter on anti-semitism. Quite an unspectacular romp through some of the usual suspects (Tom Paulin, Tam Dayell and the supression of the EU report).

Iraq Phase three: civil warSimon Tisdall in today's paper: "An orderly transition and the assertion of legitimate, democratic governance is by no means assured. Continuing, escalating civil strife, scattering the seeds of a possible civil war, could yet turn out to be the Bush-Blair legacy in Iraq. "